The Innovative Usage Thread

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I hear come get all the time around here but there's always 'and' in the middle when in tenses other than simple present.

[faiuwle]

Yeah, there is "come and get", which works like a completely functional conjunction of two verbs that both conjugate ("came and got", "coming and getting" "have come and gotten", etc.). Maybe "come get" (and "go get") are just from extreme elisions of the "and", but apparently I use it without the "and" so much that at I've started treating it as a single verb at least some of the time. It wasn't just "came got" (which looks like it would be missing an "and"), but "come got", with only the "got" in the past tense, which makes it look like the "come" has evolved into some sort of aspect marker, or something.

[Jetboy]

Could "Come get" be considered a serial verb, perhaps? Or am I just trying to read too much exoticity into English?

[Chargone]

pretty sure 'come get' started off as 'come and get'. two verbs involved, ya know? but and gets reduced to 'n' a lot... and then the words either side get run together...

your 'come got' would usually be 'came and got', but with the vowels being different it doesn't reduce nicely, i guess. 'come and got' does, so i suppose it would sound better despite being wonkier grammatically (at least in as much as i understand it, so, you know, take that for what it's worth.)

"Came and got" is perfectly fine to me; the only difference between that and "come and get" is that the and cannot be elided completely, but can only be reduced to a syllabic nasal.

There ya go. Basically what I was trying to say, said properly. (well, except that personally, i can't lose the final stop in the 'and' in 'came and got' either. though it does become less distinct.)

[Qwynegold]

We also have a weird way of expressing our emotional state using "have/has",

Example:
I have sadness / I has sadface = I'm sad
I have happiness / I has happyface = I'm happy
I have anger / I has madface = I'm angry.
I have amusement / I has amused face = I'm amused

That's lolcat.

[Chargone]

We also have a weird way of expressing our emotional state using "have/has",

Example:
I have sadness / I has sadface = I'm sad
I have happiness / I has happyface = I'm happy
I have anger / I has madface = I'm angry.
I have amusement / I has amused face = I'm amused

That's lolcat.

and it's spreading. (i know i often say 'i has a hunger' rather than 'i'm hungry' when i'm planning on raiding the fridge and such ).

i often hear my brother and others his age pronounce 'lol' as if it's a word in it's own right. Usually meaning 'that's amusing, but not funny enough to actually Laugh at.' with implications that either the thing in question or the person responsible for it isn't as bright as they could be. or it seems that way.

[Ser]

lolcat expressions widespread on the internet are innovative by themselves. They aren't "proper" English, but aren't they still part of English? Though yeah, taking them to actually spoken language is another level.

In San Salvador you can hear some people my age and younger saying "lol" [lol] in spoken language, too. I remember some classmates of mine in El Salvador who used to say "FTW" [foɾ.de.ˈwiŋ, -n], "whee!" [(g)wi::] and "Fail!" [ˈfe.il] as well, used just like in English, even though technically that isn't "proper" Spanish either. A guy from Spain told me that "epic" is popular over there, although I've never heard or seen that myself in San Salvador.

I know this isn't a legit innovation like others in this thread, but today I saw a guy with Mando as his L1 saying "if you know Clint add it!". I'm sure it has to do with the fact that Mandarin (technically) uses the same word for "he, she, it", tā (even if spelled in various ways according to gender: 他 'he', 她 'she', 它 'it'), and I just found it interesting.

[Jipí]

i often hear my brother and others his age pronounce 'lol' as if it's a word in it's own right. Usually meaning 'that's amusing, but not funny enough to actually Laugh at.'

Ditto between my sister and me. In spite of not being English L1ers. It's like "We know this is supposed to be a joke, but it's (deliberately) so dumb or silly that we would only laugh at it sarcastically."

[Mr. Z]

lolcat expressions widespread on the internet are innovative by themselves. They aren't "proper" English, but aren't they still part of English? Though yeah, taking them to actually spoken language is another level.

In San Salvador you can hear some people my age and younger saying "lol" [lol] in spoken language, too. I remember some classmates of mine in El Salvador who used to say "FTW" [foɾ.de.ˈwiŋ, -n], "whee!" [(g)wi::] and "Fail!" [ˈfe.il] as well, used just like in English, even though technically that isn't "proper" Spanish either. A guy from Spain told me that "epic" is popular over there, although I've never heard or seen that myself in San Salvador.

I know this isn't a legit innovation like others in this thread, but today I saw a guy with Mando as his L1 saying "if you know Clint add it!". I'm sure it has to do with the fact that Mandarin (technically) uses the same word for "he, she, it", tā (even if spelled in various ways according to gender: 他 'he', 她 'she', 它 'it'), and I just found it interesting.

Fail and and the like are also sometimes used in Hebrew, I think. Or am I the only person who uses that?

[Astraios]

Fail and and the like are also sometimes used in Hebrew, I think. Or am I the only person who uses that?

Nope, you aren't the only one. My friends use it too.

[Nortaneous]

"was gonna shrooms with some hipster chick but it takes three goddamn hours to public transportation up there"

[dunomapuka]

I think I just heard a CNN anchor say "efforting." We are efforting to get someone on the phone. Is there some kind of verbing epidemic going on?

[Astraios]

I said "deep hair" instead of "thick hair". I'm guessing it was a Lakotaism, where the same word is used for "deep (like water)" and "thick (like hair)". HowTF did that indistinction get stuck in my head.

[linguoboy]

Someone titled a post in one of my comms "sorry for shrapnel asking". It was the second short question in two days about nuances of English usage, presumably for the same translation.

[Magb]

I said "deep hair" instead of "thick hair". I'm guessing it was a Lakotaism, where the same word is used for "deep (like water)" and "thick (like hair)". HowTF did that indistinction get stuck in my head.

I do this sometimes. Although in general English makes far more lexical distinctions than Norwegian, there are of course cases where Norwegian has a distinction English doesn't, and I sometimes find myself forgetting how to make the distinction in Norwegian. An example that comes to mind is "suspicious", which is mistenkelig, and "suspicious of", which is mistenksom. I always have to think for a second before deciding which word to use when speaking or writing Norwegian.

"Deep" and "thick" is a very basic distinction to erase though.

[Åge Kruger]

I recently read in an online debate the Norwegian innovation en mørk - "a dark", for a person with dark skin. I am yet to read "en lys" for someone with light skin, but hope springs eternal for a full range of nouns to describe someone's skin colour with exceptional precision -
"I was served by a fallow in the shop today."
"I'm not racist, my best friend is an Eath Yellow."
"The new guy at work is a Sepia."

[Bristel]

I recently read in an online debate the Norwegian innovation en mørk - "a dark", for a person with dark skin. I am yet to read "en lys" for someone with light skin, but hope springs eternal for a full range of nouns to describe someone's skin colour with exceptional precision -
"I was served by a fallow in the shop today."
"I'm not racist, my best friend is an Eath Yellow."
"The new guy at work is a Sepia."

That's funny, I was thinking of a friend of mine who is black that said "I can't be racist towards him, I've got 'Crayola Flesh' colored friends too!".

Probably the funniest comment on color I've heard someone make.

[linguoboy]

So here's a question about a particular type of coordinate compound in English, namely "[noun of relationship] [noun of relationship]" = "standing in such a relationship [pred. adj.]". Examples:

"Hey Quinn, you still buddy-buddy (heh heh) with that "genius" James Harris?"
"Were they boyfriend-girlfriend before?"

How productive is this? I've heard both of the foregoing compounds quite a bit, but other combos don't seem to allow the same use, e.g. *"Are they father-son?"

[faiuwle]

I think I have heard "father-son" in the context of small businesses owned by a father and his son, and "mother-daughter" in the context of a girl-scouting social event that involved bringing your mother along, and I have heard "they are brother-sister" before.

[Jipí]

Welp, there's already singer-songwriter for one...

[linguoboy]

Welp, there's already singer-songwriter for one...

Really? You've heard "Those two are singer-songwriter" or something equivalent?

Just to clarify, I'm not asking about appositive compounds (where both nouns refer to the same person) but a particular subset of coordinate compounds (a.k.a. dvandva compounds).

[Nortaneous]

I think I have heard "father-son" in the context of small businesses owned by a father and his son, and "mother-daughter" in the context of a girl-scouting social event that involved bringing your mother along, and I have heard "they are brother-sister" before.

The first two are common, but I've never heard the third. I don't think it'd be grammatical to use that sort of appositive compound as a noun, but as an adjective (e.g. "brother-sister rock group"), it'd be fine.

[linguoboy]

I think I have heard "father-son" in the context of small businesses owned by a father and his son, and "mother-daughter" in the context of a girl-scouting social event that involved bringing your mother along, and I have heard "they are brother-sister" before.

The first two are common, but I've never heard the third. I don't think it'd be grammatical to use that sort of appositive compound as a noun, but as an adjective (e.g. "brother-sister rock group"), it'd be fine.

I don't think it's being used as a noun in faiuwle's examples but as a predicate adjective. (Cf. "Are they related?") So are you saying you're fine with it as an attributive adjective but simply not as a predicate?

[Nortaneous]

Yeah, I think that's it.

[äreo]

Does anyone else use "fuck off" with a pronoun compliment? As in "fuck off me"? I think I'm doing it by analogy with French constructions like "fous-moi le camp".